Standing – Robert Mulligan, William Wyler, George Cukor, Robert Wise, Jean-Claude Carrière and Serge Silverman. Sitting – Billy Wilder, George Stevens, Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock and Rouben Mamoulian. (Photo from 1972, posted at John Greco’s blogsite Watching Shadows on the Wall.)
Note: This is the second entry in an ongoing series of bloggers who have really made a difference, raising the bar for quality and productivity on the cultural front.
by Sam Juliano
Everyone has their own special niche. Floridian John Greco, who lived most of his life in and around New York City has amassed an enviable collection of photographs of yesteryear, when movies premiered in red-carpeted palaces, and with it an incredible memory of the times he was an active participant during cultural upheaval. At his two blogsites, the widely popular Twenty Four Frames and the newer Watching Shadows on the Wall, Greco has made film history a central focus, unearthing rare photographs (like the priceless one that heads this piece) across the entire cultural spectrum, and covering films that were released in the 60’s and 70’s, but never caught on with the public. An avid movie goer since the late 60’s, Greco continues to this very day to maintain a torrid pace at theatres for the current fare, while negotiating the DVD front for a continuing examination of classic cinema.
While Greco makes no secret that his favorite genre is “film noir” and has reviewed virtually every major entry at Twenty Four Frames, he is still as diversified as any blogger-critic out there, and his background in film is extraordinarily comprehensive. A patron of the old Video Shack and RKO Video Store on 49th Street in Manhattan, where all the action was from the mid 7o’s well in the 80’s, Greco has admitted he dropped more money than he’d like to remember in those days when Betamax tapes had better quality than their VHS counterparts, while simultaneously collecting music CDs during the glory days of rock. (more…)
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